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Three years after receiving bone-marrow transplant from her brother, Stanley is thriving

Tuesday, January, 08 By Alan Siegel
Staff writer

On Jan. 25, 2005, Haverhill High freshman Michelle Stanley received a bone-marrow transplant. Three years later, she shrugs off the idea of self-pity.

"There's not really a lot of room to be upset all the time," she said.

Let's see here.

Six months at home. No friends allowed to visit. No school. No basketball.

Just books, DVDs and dozens of calling cards her choir group donated so she could reach the outside world without running up big phone bills.

Not upset?

"She's just so strong," friend and teammate Colleen Garvey said.

"She's a battler," Haverhill coach Kevin Woelfel said. "It's what she does every day."

Michelle, diagnosed with aplastic anemia in December 2004, had no choice. Either fight the rare, potentially fatal disease, which halts the production of blood cells, or succumb to it.

"I needed to be strong for myself," she said, "and for everyone else around me."

Michelle, now a 17-year-old senior quad-captain, visits Children's Hospital Boston, the site of her transplant surgery, less and less. Fears of relapse fade as the days pass. And sports, forgotten for six months while she recovered, are a big part of her life.

"It's absolutely incredible," her mother Debbie said. "Every day, it's like, 'Thank God.' That's how it is."

'I didn't want to know what it was'

It is truly incredible, considering what Michelle faced. In December 2004, the headaches started. She began to bruise severely. Small cuts didn't stop bleeding. A single wind sprint left her gasping for air.

"At first," she said, "I thought it was just because I wasn't in that great of shape. I was kind of in complete denial about it for a month."

During Christmas break, she finally relented.

"I knew something was really wrong," she said. "I didn't want to know what it was."

Her parents, after seeing the bruises, took her to the hospital, where she was ordered to the lab for blood work. Then, at midnight on Dec. 30, Children's Hospital called. Something wasn't right. Michelle needed to come in for more tests.

Her platelet count was low. More tests were ordered. Doctors thought it could be leukemia. A few days later, at 5:30 a.m., the phone rang.

The news was grim. Michelle had aplastic anemia. Somehow, she stayed calm. Still, the whole thing seemed too strange to be real.

"What just happened to me?" she remembered thinking. That was about the only thinking Michelle had time for. Doctors explained the treatment options. The best shot, it appeared, was a bone-marrow transplant, which had about an 80 percent success rate.

"I thought I was going to fall out the window," said Debbie, who had never even heard of aplastic anemia before her daughter was diagnosed.

Michelle's brother Bryan, then 11, was the best chance of a bone-marrow match. A blood test confirmed it. "We were supposed to be happy," Debbie said, "yet we were petrified to death."

The transplant process is excruciating for an adult. Imagine going through it as an 11-year-old. To avoid panic, Debbie said, Bryan was, "On a need to know basis. ... He's not big on needles."

'After this, it's easy'

Five days before the transplant surgery, Michelle began chemotherapy.

The treatment, she said, destroyed her malfunctioning bone marrow. It also left her immune system shot. That week, visitors were not permitted in her room.

Michelle credits the nurses at Children's Hospital, which is affiliated with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, for helping keep her emotions in check. When she began to lose her hair in big clumps, she needed a lift. One particular nurse knew what had to be done.

"Let's go," she told Michelle.

So in the nearby bathroom, while the they talked about boys, basketball and movies, the nurse cut off the rest of Michelle's locks. In a way, it was therapeutic.

"The worst part of it," the nurse told her, "is almost over. After this, it's easy."

In reality, there is no easy part.

Anesthesia eased the procedure a bit for Bryan, who Debbie called, "a trouper."

Still, he had to weather the 100-plus needle pricks in his lower back it took to extract bone marrow. It's not exactly acupuncture.

"(Doctors) liken it to drinking a slush," Debbie said. "You move the straw around when there's not any more liquid. They keep moving (the needle)."

"It feels like a horse kicking your back," Michelle said. Bryan really was a trouper. Jan. 25 was a Friday. Debbie said he was back on the basketball court four days later.

Michelle, on the other hand, had a longer road. Her surgery went off without a hitch, but she spent about a month and a half in the hospital, waiting for her blood cell count to reach a satisfactory level.

She ate little, slept during the day, but by mid-February, she was walking the halls.

"I was probably one of the luckier ones on the floor," she said, citing the numerous young patients being treated around her.

Bryan, now a freshman at Whittier Tech, where he is already one of the top cross country runners in the Commonwealth Conference, visited when he could. He spoke little, but he was there for his big sister.

"He hates hospitals," Michelle said. "He would sit with me, but as far as talking goes, there wasn't a lot of that going on."

These days, the transplant is a source of light-hearted exchanges between them. When Bryan recently told Michelle she owed him a $175 pair of sneakers because he saved her life, she laughed.

"We're both easy going," Michelle said. "It's not so sentimental."

At this point, Bryan, a varsity point guard at Whittier, is just waiting for his sister to play him one-on-one. "Every time, she says no," he said. "Because she knows she won't win."

'She probably held everyone else together'

For six months after the transplant, Michelle's brother Bryan, her mother Debbie, her father Michael and a tutor were the only four people allowed in her house. She left twice a week, but only for hospital visits.

Still, Michelle made the most out of seclusion. She did school work (she's on track to graduate on time), watched movies and read close to 80 books, she said.

Like usual, she remained level-headed.

"She probably held everyone else together," said Debbie (Boule) Stanley, who played basketball for the Hillies in the early '80s.

"Isn't it remarkable?" Woelfel said. "I think of the way I would've acted at my age ..."

After the six months passed, Michelle visited Children's Hospital less and less. Bi-weekly checkups became weekly, then bi-monthly, then once every three months, then once every six months, and now, only once a year.

In July 2005, she picked up a basketball for the first time since the transplant. She made the varsity team as a sophomore, averaging 2.3 points per game. In her mind, she was struggling.

"I got extremely aggravated," she said. "It obviously made me upset. I really started working a lot harder. I wanted to be the best that I could be for myself."

The 5-foot-6 point guard spent 2-3 hours in the gym every day during the summer of 2006 and increased her scoring average to 6.0 points per game last season. This winter, she's averaging 8.9 points per game for the 3-5 Hillies. With her around, no lose ball is safe.

"She goes after everything," Garvey said, presumably referring to basketball and life. "I don't remember her complaining about anything."

Today, she's in good health | she doesn't take any medication and is completely free of aplastic anemia | and in good spirits.

But there are days, she said, that the past nips at Michelle. If she finds a fresh bruise, or is out of breath, she wonders if she's relapsing.

"She's very in tune with her body now," Debbie said. "As soon as she feels something weird, it's automatic. Even if it's really not anything, it's, 'Let's go get it checked.'" Michelle may rarely visit Children's Hospital these days, but last fall, she organized a sock hop that raised $4,000 for the bone-marrow transplant unit.

The surgery, while traumatic, is never far from her thoughts.

"It's not going to go away," she said. "It's not erased from my memory. But hey, if people are interested, I like to talk. Why not?"

Apparently, there's not still not a lot of room for negativity in Michelle's life.